


4-D

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [192]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Gen, Not Really Character Death, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-11-27 03:37:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20941646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf
Summary: Somehow time got reset at the end of the episode, so it's not as though Doggett would actually remember any of this. But I wanted to play with what might have happened to him when he got pulled into the parallel world, and how that world might look.





	1. Chapter 1

_“Let me get some plates.”  
“Plates! For crying out loud, who eats Polish sausage with plates?”_

His cell phone trills in his pocket, and he digs it out, swallowing quickly before answering. 

“John Doggett.”

“Where are you?” Brad Follmer barks in his ear.

“Sir?”

“We followed you to the alley, but you’re not here. Where did you go? Do you still have eyes on Lukesh?”

“Sir, I’m… afraid you mighta dialed the wrong number. This is Agent Doggett. I’m not on duty today.”

“Damn it, John, going vigilante isn’t going to solve anything. We will make him pay for what he did to her, but we have to do it the right way. Now tell me where you are!”

“I’m…” He flounders, walking toward the kitchen. Maybe Monica will have some idea what on God’s green earth Follmer is talking about?

The kitchen is empty. _The hell?_ There’s only one doorway in and out, and he definitely saw her go in there.

“Monica?” he says, turning in a circle. 

He only realizes he’s lowered the hand holding his phone once he registers the sound of Follmer yelling through the tinny speaker somewhere near his hip. He quickly brings the phone back to his ear.

“...isn’t going to bring her back! Do you hear me?! I am ordering you to stand down!”

“Sir, with all due respect, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I’m at Agent Reyes’s apartment right now. The one she’s just moved into. If I can… she was here just a second ago.” Leaving the kitchen, he walks back into the front room, holding the phone away again briefly while he shouts. “Monica! Where’d you go?”

“How did you… Her new place in Georgetown? You expect me to believe you got all the way over to Georgetown on foot in five minutes?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where you think I was supposed to be this morning, but I’m not--”

He gets to the front door, which is not only closed now but locked, with the deadbolt engaged. He knows for a fact it was standing wide open when he got here.

“I’m… not…”

“Agent Doggett, listen to me. I think you might be in shock. Just tell me where you really are, and I’ll send someone to come get you.”

“Yeah, sir, I’m gonna have to call you back.”

“Wait! Joh--”

He hangs up the phone and hits the speed dial for Monica’s cell number. “Come on, come on, pick up,” he mutters as it rings, ignoring the interrupting beeps as Follmer tries to call him back, then cursing when it goes to voicemail. He hangs up again, and when his phone rings almost immediately -- still Follmer -- he shuts it off entirely, scowling.

The apartment is nice, but it isn’t huge, and he walks through every bit of it. She is nowhere to be found. On his second pass through the kitchen, he notices that the paper bag and the other sausage are both gone. None of this makes any sense. He was here the whole time, and he never saw her leave. It’s like she vanished into thin air, only that’s impossible.

Isn’t it?


	2. Chapter 2

He’d thought he was so clever, leaving his truck at the Hoover Building this morning and avoiding the nightmare that is Georgetown street parking on a Saturday; now he’s regretting that decision, big time, as he hoofs it the eight blocks to Agent Scully’s place. He hates to bother her on the weekend, but he honestly has no idea where else to go.

His jaw falls open when Mulder answers the door.

Bizarrely, Mulder looks equally surprised to see him. “Agent Doggett, I-- we just heard. Skinner called, and… I assumed you were at the hospital. Scully’s headed there now.”

Hospital? First he’s supposed to be in some alley with Follmer, and now a hospital? He holds up his hands.

“Look, I don’t know what in God’s name is going on here, but I haven’t understood one single word I’ve heard in the last half hour. First Follmer, and now you… and when the hell did you get back, anyway?”

Mulder frowns. "Back from where?"

"How the hell should I know? Agent Scully never said. Told me _she_ had no idea where you went, either."

"And… when was that?"

"Come on, Mulder, cut the crap! You don’t get to just up and take off for five months and then play dumb about it!”

“No, I’m not-- Look, why don’t you come inside for a minute?” Mulder steps back, opening the door wider. “I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but I’ll call Scully, and we can try to figure this out, all right?”

Doggett wants to argue, but it’s not like he’s got any better ideas at the moment. He walks past Mulder into the living room and immediately notices that it’s been rearranged since the last time he was here. Granted, that was a few weeks ago, but it looks really different, not just in terms of furniture placement but in the piles of papers on the coffee table and the second computer on the desk. It has the distinct look of cohabitation, and not just recent cohabitation, either.

“Wait, how long _have_ you been back?” he asks, turning back toward Mulder. “I just talked to Agent Scully three days ago, and she never said one word about it. But from the looks of this place, I’d say you’ve been here at least a week. Maybe more.”

Mulder closes the front door and looks at him with concern. “You and Agent Reyes had dinner here last weekend. Are you saying you don’t remember that?”

“What are you talking about, dinner? I spent last weekend rebuilding my back deck. Only place I went was the hardware store.” 

“That… doesn’t make any sense.”

“You’re telling me! Either I’m dreaming or I’m losing my mind, but not a damned thing is making sense to me right now.” He doesn’t like the careful, almost pitying look Mulder gives him in response. “You think I _am_ losing my mind. I’m telling you, I’m just as sane as I was when I woke up this morning. It’s the whole rest of the world that’s gone nuts.”

“I think,” Mulder says gently, “that we can’t always expect how trauma will affect us.” He walks over to the phone, picks up the handset and starts dialing. “And I also think that Scully will know what to do. Why don’t you sit down?”

Doggett has no desire to sit down, but Mulder walks away before he can argue, going into the bedroom and closing the door. So he paces, instead, trying to put the pieces together from everything that has transpired since Monica left the room to get plates. That was the point where everything went off the rails. 

Follmer said something about shock, and now Mulder’s talking about trauma, but it was a completely normal Saturday until Monica disappeared. Did he fall and hit his head? Is he lying unconscious on her floor right now with a brain aneurysm? Wouldn’t he remember something like that happening? 

“She’s on her way,” Mulder says, emerging from the bedroom. “She wants me to ask what you remember about this morning. What happened before you came here?”

“I got up, drove into the city, and left my truck at the Hoover Building. Took a cab over to M Street, picked up a couple of Polish sausages from Stachowski’s, and walked to Monica’s new place. We talked for a minute, she went into the kitchen, and that’s when everything went haywire.”

Mulder frowns. “According to Skinner, you and Agent Reyes were on a stakeout this morning with AD Follmer. You don’t remember anything about that?”

“Why in the hell would we be on a stakeout? It’s a Saturday, and even if it weren’t, we don’t have any active cases right now, anyway.”

“But you remember driving to work,” Mulder points out.

“Only because I didn’t want to deal with parking over on this side of town!” 

“All right.” Mulder holds up his hands. “So you said Agent Reyes went into the kitchen, and then everything went haywire. What do you mean by that?”

Doggett gives a frustrated sigh, then recounts the whole ridiculous series of events, between Follmer’s call and Monica’s disappearance and how the open front door was closed and deadbolted.

“And before you ask if maybe she went out a different way and I just didn’t see her leave, not a chance. There’s one doorway in and out of that kitchen, and I was standing in front of it the whole time.”

Hearing himself say everything out loud, he knows exactly how insane it all sounds. He’s beginning to have a healthy dose of sympathy for some of the people he’s dealt with during his time on the X-Files. To Mulder’s credit, he’s looking at him more thoughtfully than dismissively.

A faint cry from the other room causes both men to glance toward the bedroom door. Mulder looks at the clock on the wall and gives a wry smile, shaking his head.

“Right on schedule. Kid’s like a Swiss watch these days. Excuse me a minute.”

Resisting the urge to resume pacing, Doggett walks to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. On the counter beside the coffee maker is a framed photo he’s never seen before; in it, Mulder is holding baby William, who looks to be a couple of months old. 

“What the hell?” Doggett murmurs, picking up the frame.

He flips it over and takes the frame apart to extract the photograph, looking for the date printed on the back.

11 Jul 2001

How is that possible? Mulder had been gone, what, six weeks by then? He’s pretty sure Agent Scully, fearful though she was for Mulder’s safety, still would have mentioned it if he’d swung back through town for a visit.

He’s still holding the photograph when Mulder walks into the kitchen with the baby in his arms.

“Explain to me how this is possible,” Doggett says quietly. “How is there a photo of you from July when I am pretty damned sure you were nowhere near here?”

Mulder sets about making a bottle of formula. “You keep talking about my being gone, but the fact is, I never went anywhere.”

Doggett narrows his eyes. “What are you saying, you were just hiding here the whole time? You expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t expect you to believe much of anything,” Mulder says dryly. “But I’m starting to think that whatever’s going on here is more than just trauma-induced memory loss.”

“You know, that’s the second time you’ve mentioned trauma, but I’ve still got no idea what you could possibly mean. This morning has been weird, no question, but unless all of this is one big hallucination because I fell and hit my head or something--”

The front door opens, and he looks up to see Agent Scully walking in, her eyes wide and worried. “John,” she says as her gaze finds his. “How did you get here?”

_Things must really be bad if she’s calling me John. _“I walked.”

“From Dillon Park?” she asks, brow creased in confusion.

“What? No. From Monica’s apartment.” Exasperation threatens to completely overwhelm him. “Would somebody _please_ start talking sense here? AD Follmer says I’m supposed to be in some alley, Mulder says I’m supposed to be at the hospital, and now you’re talking about Dillon Park. What the hell is going on with everyone today?! How is it possible that my partner disappearing into thin air is _not_ the most confusing thing that’s happened in the last hour?!”

“Disappearing…” Scully looks pained. “John, Monica’s dead. She was killed trying to apprehend a suspect this morning near Dillon Park. You and AD Follmer were watching from the surveillance van.”

“What are you _talking_ about?!” he explodes, and William starts to cry. He shoots an apologetic look over at Mulder, who bounces the baby gently to settle him, and then lowers his voice to continue. “I don’t know who told you that, but not one word of it is true.”

Scully shakes her head sadly. “I’m so sorry, but--”

“I believe you,” Mulder interrupts.

Doggett and Scully both look at him in surprise. “What?”

“Too much doesn’t add up,” he says. “How you got all the way across town so fast. Why you think I’ve been gone for five months.” He glances at Scully as he says this, and her eyes widen; Doggett watches an entire silent conversation pass between them in the course of a few seconds before Mulder turns his attention back to him. “What do you know about the theory of parallel dimensions?”


	3. Chapter 3

“Wow.” Doggett shakes his head, unable to even remotely believe any of what just came out of Mulder’s mouth. Parallel universes and rips in the time-space continuum and all manner of other sci-fi garbage. “Wherever you’ve been hiding out, you musta spent the whole time watching Star Trek.”

There’s that look again between Mulder and Scully, and then Scully clears her throat. “I know it sounds impossible, but the fact that you believe Mulder’s been away is the one thing that makes me think there might actually be some merit to this theory.”

Doggett frowns. “How do you mean?”

“Right after William was born, we received a warning that Mulder’s life was in danger. That he should leave, to protect himself  _ and _ us.”

“I know,” Doggett says. “You told me that, and then Kersh told me he was the one who warned you. Said Mulder wouldn’t listen to him, but you did.”

“That’s the thing,” Mulder says. “Neither of us listened to Kersh. But then we got word from Gibson Praise, confirming the danger, and we all left.”

Doggett didn’t think it was possible to get even more confused, yet here he is. “What do you mean, you all left? A few minutes ago you were trying to tell me you never went anywhere. So which is it? And… what would Gibson Praise have to do with any of it?”

“We were only gone for a couple of weeks,” Scully says. “Gibson used his… abilities… to help us figure out how to deal with the men who were after both him and Mulder.”

“Gibson and Scully figured it out,” Mulder adds, looking at her with pride while he bounces a smiling William on his knee. “We’d probably still be out there if she hadn’t--” His expression sobers, and he gives a rueful sort of chuckle. “Well, I guess that’s why you haven’t seen the version of me in your universe for five months. If I went off on my own, without Scully… even if I did find Gibson, I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to come up with a way to beat them.”

“You’re telling me all of you left. For two weeks. And this chess prodigy kid helped you figure out a way to take out the supersoldiers, and then, what, you all came back?” He shakes his head. “Maybe I  _ am _ losing it, because I’ve got a whole different set of memories for the last five months.”

“Except it would all make perfect sense if you’re actually from a different dimension.” Doggett scoffs, and Mulder raises his eyebrows. “Give me another theory that fits.”

“Okay, maybe this is all a prank,” Doggett says with a shrug. “Be a pretty weird and elaborate prank, but…”

Mulder barks a laugh. “Yeah. I’d have to have gotten back, what, yesterday? No offense, Agent Doggett, but if I’d been away from these two for months, my first order of business would  _ definitely _ not be spending half a day staging this apartment and faking photographs in order to pull a prank on you.”

He has to admit that’s fair. But damn it, if it’s not that…

“Well, then maybe this  _ is _ all in my head. I mean, I feel like I’d remember passing out or falling down or something, but it  _ would _ fit.” 

Poor Monica. If he’s actually lying unconscious on her floor, she is probably freaking the hell out right now. 

“Except that we’re real,” Mulder points out.

“Well, yeah, you would say that even if I were hallucinating though, wouldn’t you?” Actually, that reminds him of a case file he read, back when he first started on the X-Files. “Hey, didn’t you two run into some kinda… mushroom thing that made you see things that weren’t real?”

“Well, yes,” Scully says, “but--”

“And didn’t everyone tell you Mulder was dead? Just like everyone’s trying to tell me Monica’s dead?”

“Right, but--”

“So all I’ve gotta do is figure out what I got exposed to, and then wake myself up out of it. Like you did.”

“Think about what you’re suggesting,” Mulder says. “Given what you’ve told us about your day so far, that would mean you either have a massive carnivorous mushroom growing underneath your yard, or Stachowski’s is selling laced Polish sausages.”

“At least both of those things could really happen,” Doggett counters. “There’s precedent there. Unlike this crackpot theory of yours about parallel dimensions.”

“Come on, it’s a perfectly legitimate--”

“Realizing we were trapped underground was enough to get the illusion to break, temporarily,” Scully interrupts. “Look around. Unless you can see yellow digestive enzyme dripping from the walls, I think we can rule out the mushroom theory.”

Doggett blinks, frowning. “Well, no, I don’t see anything like that. But if it was something in the food…”

“Look, if you don’t believe any of this is real, then we aren’t going to get anywhere,” Mulder says. “You may as well just go back home and wait to wake up, because there’s nothing any of us can say or do to make a difference. But let me tell you something. The John Doggett I know wouldn’t be content to just walk away and wait it out. Hell, I don’t even know you  _ that _ well and I still know that much. You’re not one to roll over and ignore something just because you can’t explain it right away.”

He’s not sure if this is some reverse psychology bullshit or if Fox Mulder actually just paid him something resembling a compliment.

“If nothing else,” Scully adds, “following up on Mulder’s theory won’t lose you anything. Worst case scenario, you’re right, and either you wake up at some point, or…”

“Or I croak. That is if I’m not dead already.” He narrows his eyes; that possibility doesn’t bear thinking too deeply about. “So what’s the best case scenario, then?”

“We figure out how you got here, and we find a way to send you home,” Mulder says.

Doggett laughs. “Well, I won’t hold my breath on that one. But all right. I’ll play along. Whadya got, where do we start?”

Mulder’s eyes blaze with a gleam familiar to anyone who’s spent a lot of time around investigators, that thrill of feeling like you’re on to something. “I have a feeling that the stakeout you were supposed to be on this morning has something to do with it. If indeed we’re looking at some sort of timeline divergence event, then it seems likely that the split occurred while you appeared to be in two places at once. We need to find out what you were doing over in Dillon Park.”

“Actually, I already know the answer to that,” Scully says, and they both turn to look at her. “Skinner told me you and Agent Reyes were investigating a man named Erwin Lukesh.”


End file.
